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Bees Play a Crucial Role in the Propagation of Plant Life

Queen bees mate and lay eggs for the entire span of their lives and can sometimes live up to five years, though the average lifespan is only about two to three years. Male drones, on the other hand, exist solely to fertilize the queen, and die soon after they do so.

Alternatively, female worker bees perform a variety of tasks around the hive and ensure that things continue to run smoothly within the population. Most of the time, these duties include the collection of pollen for the nourishment of the developing brood, but their roles also extend to honey sealing, grooming and feeding the queen, honeycomb building, pollen packing, carrying water, guarding the hive, and ensuring that dead drones and failed larvae are removed from the hive. As a result of their near-ceaseless toil, the life spans of these female workers rarely last longer than six weeks.

All bees are covered in thin hairs, which is crucial for pollination. They are attracted to blooming flowers and fruits, at which point they’ll alight on a blossom and collect pollen in specially-evolved pollen baskets on their back legs. As a bee travels from one blossom to another, some of this pollen will rub off into the pistil of the second plant, resulting in cross pollination. Almost all of humanity’s food supply is dependent upon pollination by honey bees.

While only female worker bees can collect and transfer pollen from plant to plant, all bees can drink nectar—their primary source of energy—through a tongue-like proboscis. After the nectar is collected, females can convert it into honey with the help of a cocktail of specialized enzymes in their stomachs. This nectar is then transported back to the hive and deposited into wax cells where it eventually evaporates into honey.

While swarms are not unheard of, they’re generally not considered a threat unless the species in question happens to be the Africanized honey bee or “killer” bee, as it’s colloquially known. Swarming usually only occurs in robust and thriving populations and often occurs as a result of overcrowding. Swarms occur when the queen, accompanied by a contingent of workers, leaves the original colony in search of a new nesting site.

The swarm will commonly stop at a resting place before sending out scouts to locate a suitable location for a new nest, such as a hollow log or similar cavity. The swarm will then relocate to the new nesting site and begin to build the hive anew.

Cantu Pest Control is proud to be the first company in Texas to offer a Green Shield Certified Service. Our Dallas bee control experts are excited to offer Green Shield Certified pest services to our customers in search of a more prevention-based solution to their pest removal and on-going pest management needs while minimizing the use of pesticides.

If bees have made unwanted appearances around your home, call Cantu Pest Control at 972-885-3618(Dallas and Fort Worth areas) or 713-999-3495(Houston area) and schedule an appointment today with one of our friendly, experienced bee removal experts.

Keep An Eye Out For Small but Potentially Damaging Moth Eggs

Moths often gain access to homes via contaminated food or clothing, essentially hitching rides on these materials and letting human activity do the lion’s share of the work. It’s also possible for household pets like dogs and cats to transport hitchhiking moths into your home.

Moth larvae can often hide in feathers or hair, meaning that it can be very hard to detect them with the naked eye. Once inside your home, these moths will likely search out dark, out-of-the-way places in order to continue breeding.

Once you’ve actually confirmed that moths have made their way inside your home, there are a number of methods for getting rid of them. One viable option involves the use of pheromones to lure moths into traps. This method requires the user to set the trap close to infested areas and basically requires them to wait for the moths to fall into the traps.

While these kinds of traps are often effective, only some types of pheromones effect certain species of moths. In order to ensure that your pheromone trap is operating efficiently, it may be necessary to enlist the help of your local pest control expert to help identify exactly which species of moth is infesting your home.

Another possible solution to a moth infestation is to simply vacuum them up. The problem with this method, however, is that it’s quite easy to miss a lot of the very small and hard to spot eggs that may be hidden away in the lining of clothes, underneath shelves, and between the fibers of clothing or carpets.

While vacuuming may help to clear away some the larger and easier to spot adult moths, this method will likely need to be supplemented with other means in order to ensure that your extermination efforts are successful.

If you’ve determined that a number of moth eggs are still clinging to your clothes even after a vigorous vacuuming, it’s possible to get rid of these errant eggs by storing your clothes in an extreme-temperature environment for a short time.

For example, if you place the bagged clothing in a freezer for about three to four days, the intense cold will have almost certainly killed any offending eggs or larvae. In the same way that bedbugs can be killed with the use of excessively high or low temperatures, the same effect can be achieved when dealing with moths and their offspring.

Cantu Pest Control is proud to be the first company in Texas to offer a Green Shield Certified Service. Our Dallas moth removal experts are excited to offer Green Shield Certified pest services to our customers in search of a more prevention-based solution to their pest removal and on-going pest management needs while minimizing the use of pesticides.

If moths have made unwanted appearances around your home, call Cantu Pest Control at 972-885-3618(Dallas and Fort Worth areas) or 713-999-3495(Houston area) and schedule an appointment today with one of our friendly, experienced moth removal experts.